I’ve felt too scatterbrained to update lately, but I don’t want to just leave that last entry up and continue giving you all the impression that I’m dwelling in some kind of hormonal never-never-land. I am now fully in the present, both with my Estrostep and, well, this site. And I am drinking Three Buck Chuck to wind down after a busy weekend of cooking, cleaning, and also, dodging huge wet blobs of snow. No, really: on Friday night a whole bunch of lovely wet snow descended and stuck to trees, lightposts, overpasses, etc., only to start falling spectacularly in big clumps on streets, cars, children, etc., as soon as the temperature rose Saturday morning. Chris and I ran errands on Saturday and got to see the transition from “Winter Wonderland” to “Slush Apocalypse” firsthand, as massive snow loogies fell all around us and other hapless pedestrians. We thought we’d be safe in the car until we reached a stop sign and dislodged a massive glacier on the roof of my car, which coursed down my windshield in much the way I imagine the melting polar ice caps are going to smear all over Canada and Siberia one day.
Someone emailed me to say they’re doing a research paper on blogs and they “need some research.” And my business address. And… that’s all they said. Could you, er, be a little more specific, Researcher Person? Or maybe you are studying my response to your very vague research request, the sending of which is part of the research process in itself? I don’t mind answering a few questions (well, maybe three), as long as one of them isn’t “What is blogging?” because, dude, we answered that already.
Also, in the past twelve hours or so I have been heralded, via email, as Starbucks Customer #469744876, Target Customer #787288174FGY, Walmart Valued Customer #70718516, Ebay Customer-836A1-836, and JCPenney Customer #975R-VBEC40. It’s true that at one time or another I have either set foot in or clicked upon all these establishments, but if I were to believe that each one dutifullly assigned me a number based on a few instances of buying coffee or Diet Coke or whatever the hell, then by extension I would also have to believe that I am walking around with a subcutaneous microchip somewhere on my person, or else a fiber optic transmitter bio-implant, or even one of those good old-fashioned Mark of The Beast UPC codes. And I’d be able to go up to ATMs and just blink at them to get money. So why would I need your silly gift cards, Starbucks and Target and Walmart?
(When I start thinking like this, it’s time for bed.)
Posted by Wendy | Sun 01.22.06 10:27 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack | send link
For the past week I have been taking my birth control pills one day ahead of schedule. What can I say? I live for the future. I took my Monday pill on Sunday and I took Tuesday’s pill today. I’m trying to figure out how this happened. Possible explanations: a.) took two pills in one day by mistake; b.) traversed a wormhole and then space curved back over on itself; c.) briefly lapsed into an undiagnosed multiple personality, also on the Pill; d.) neglected to calculate variations between menstrual cycle and Gregorian calendar and forgot to take the special Leap Pill that I need to take once every four years, or months, or… something.
But really I think I just took two pills in one day by mistake, most likely sometime over the holidays when I had a lot of days off and the weekends were long. I do remember one day around 10 am where I glanced at my pill card and thought, oh my stars! A pill untook! and popped it, because Heaven knows, I need to keep my skin clear. I’ve checked online and asked around enough to know there isn’t any immediate problem, but now I’m wondering what the hell to do when I get to the end of the pack. Do I just skip a day when I get to the Mystery Pills in the final week? Will my Start Day be henceforth one day ahead? Can I fix all this if I fly west to Japan? Any ideas? Anyone?
And lest you worry that I’m letting a bunch of online strangers tinker with my pharmaceutically-regulated woman-rhythms, I am waiting to hear back from my doctor about this. Just thought I’d share in the meantime.
*Kutesy title spelling intended to evade Google searches by kurious folks, konfused teens, or extremist kooks.
Posted by Wendy | Mon 01.09.06 02:28 PM | Comments (25) | TrackBack | send link
January I went boot camp crazy:
did way too many lunges, squats.
Thanks to this stupid page in Feb.
you could calculate our mutual hots!
In March I blathered on and on
about horoscopes, Kirstie, and chick lit.
April was big: my book came out.
I met my boyfriend. Holy shit!
All book tour hell broke loose in May:
Seattle! Portland! New York! Boston!
LA in June! And San Francisco!
And the sexiest state of all: Wisconsin.
Hit Durham in July and redesigned;
ranted about those ads for Dove.
In August: half-assed weight loss plans!
Mystery beeps! Hot penguin love!
September I wrote… um, almost nothing.
What else did I do besides get fat?
October: Halloween, obviously;
I wore the most fucked-up ever hat.
I couldn’t shut up in November—
Fat suits! Plan B! Bras with phones!
December: obsessed with gingerbread;
earrings in 99 Luftballons.
It’s January 06! I’ve yet to quit
drinking Jewel brand spiked eggnog.
But my resolutions are already done!
Well, just the one: “Update damn blog.”
Posted by Wendy | Thu 01.05.06 02:23 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack | send link
Five years ago this week I first started writing journal entries and putting them online. At the time, I was posting them to some measly half-acre of free webspace I’d staked out and called “candyboots.homestead.com.” I wrote the entries in Netscape Composer. Every time I wrote a new entry I’d open up the file for the last entry and erase the text and type something new. Then I’d upload the page, again and again and again and again. It felt cumbersome and weird, like trying to play piano with a stick in your teeth.
It was about a week before Thanksgiving. I was in the midst of one of my most Weight Watchful phases and and I didn’t want to lose myself in the holidays. I wrote about going to the gym so that I would keep going to the gym. I wrote about Swiss Colony Dobosh Torte so that I could remember, for future reference, exactly what kicked my ass at Christmas dinner. I think when I wrote these entries I did so with the idea that they were just notes to myself, and I tried to make them funny for the benefit of whoever else might be reading. Which was nobody at first. Just the idea that someone else could be reading was enough.
When I first started, I didn’t disclose my last name or what city I lived in; I was just “Wendy Something-or-Other” and I lived “in the Midwest.” This was considered a perfectly sensible approach and not bugfucking paranoid at all. Usually you had a either a first name or a nickname. And either you almost never posted your own photo, or else you totally did and you had a webcam and maybe sometimes also a hinky sense of personal boundaries. You were either on Diaryland or your own domain. You were either an online journaler or a blogger, and if you were a blogger, you tended to write more about CSS standards than about your inner life.
What else was different: I lived in a studio apartment and I had dial-up access. Some of my friends were different. And this is very hard to measure, but I don’t think I felt quite as part of the world as I do now. I don’t know how much of that had to do with my body and how much is just a matter of becoming settled. I know just that there’s no sense of solitary existence when I write for this site anymore. And I think I’m glad for this, though you might have to be me to understand why. Maybe not.
Anyway, Happy Thanskgiving! That low-point pumpkin pie recipe they give out at the Weight Watchers meetings still tastes like ass. Like hell. Like licking powdered Cremora off a truck tire. Some things never change.
Posted by Wendy | Tue 11.22.05 04:37 PM | TrackBack | send link
You may have noticed, if you know me in person, the rather personal place where I tend to keep my cell phone. Depending whether or not you use euphemisms, I keep my cell phone either “close to my heart” or “stuffed in my bra like a skank dollar dancer’s haul.”
I don’t expect you to fully understand. I don’t need your approval. Just know that the proverbial Waitress Wallet has become the preferred conveyance for my phone and, occasionally, other small items such as hotel key cards and iPod minis. Somehow that is just my way.
I can’t remember exactly when my phone first made it to second base with me. I think maybe once I wore something without pockets and had to put it down my shirt. I believe at least once I stuck it there absentmindedly. It just seeemed like a handy place. It is a handy place: one that you can easily reach (well, not you you, because that would be creepy) and just a tidier place for personal storage than jeans pockets or a purse. When folded, my phone has a fantastically streamlined, slippery outer shell that allows it to hurtle through space into other dimensions; there are portals to other worlds located in my purse and under the drivers seat in my car, and my phone is always in danger of slipping through them and winding up in the hands of the White Witch of Narnia, but as long as my phone is safely hidden away in the hills, I worry much less.
Sticking my phone down my shirt became more of a habit once I began to travel a lot this spring and summer. When I kept my phone in my bag, the only reliable way it could be located was when it turned up on airport security x-rays looking exactly like a laser-powered radar-jamming anthrax disseminator. Whenever I needed it for decidedly less terror-oriented purposes such as checking my voice mail or sending schmoopy text messages, it was a bitch to find. And then the night before I flew to Boston, my phone went missing; I had to stop packing and drive back to my office to look for it; I was making frantic plans to buy a new one in the morning, when I heard from a delivery driver who'd found it in the parking lot at work. After that I decided once and for all that knowing where my phone was at all times was more important than not looking like a right saucy wench with a bodice full o' shillings. I never have to root around in my purse; now I glide around serenely knowing, with what you might call womanly instinct, that my LG C1500 is nigh.
Also? I never miss a call this way. Even when I'm somewhere noisy or crowded I know when I'm getting a call. I'd tell you how but some of you might feel this is too much information.
What? It's not like I keep money in there. Not when I'm sober.
I guess some people are horrified by this, but it's just a bra. It's just a bosom. Ever since I've owned one I've been heartily encouraged to show it off and yet I'm not allowed to keep stuff in it? Not fair, I say. So enough with your silly double standards about female support garments, and don't give me that look when I take a call. Let us be, me and my phone and its cozy mountain home. Thank you.
Posted by Wendy | Thu 11.03.05 04:43 PM | Comments (34) | TrackBack | send link
Costume/year: Hippie,1983
Consisted of: Bellbottom jeans; peasant blouse; hoop earrings, beads. Overall effect of jewelry more “Claire’s Boutique” than “head shop,” but we tried.
Advantages: Subversive feeling of getting to wear highly unfashionable clothing to school in seventh grade without suffering dire social consequences.
Limitations: At school, the only people who understood costume were teachers.
Unexpected benefit: Extra candy from nostalgic thirtysomethings while trick-or-treating. Relatively early experience with 60s-styled posturing allowed me to resist dumb-assed Grateful Dead revival in high school.
Costume/year: Sylvia Plath (post-mortem), 1992
Consisted of: Housedress; bathrobe; blue lipstick; crumpled drafts of poems in pockets; suicide note pinned to front; can of Easy-Off oven cleaner.
Advantages: Total English major snob value; also, way comfortable.
Limitations: You really can only say “Daddy, Daddy you bastard, I’m through,” so many times before it gets old.
Unexpected benefit: Even drunken frat boys knew better than to mess with a chick carrying a can of Easy-Off.
Costume/year: Yoko Ono, 1994
Consisted of: Long black wig; giant sunglasses; wide-brimmed black hat; mod thrift store dress; boots.
Advantages: Looked awesome with best friend who went as John Lennon.
Limitations: Looked dumb when not with best friend who went as John Lennon.
Unexpected benefit: Surprisingly easy to pull off, despite having no physical resemblance to Yoko Ono whatsoever.
Costume/year: Fundamentalist Christian, various years
Consisted of: Two basic variations: either Classic Church Lady, with oversized purse, dumpy dress, cardigan, sensible shoes; or 70s Godspell Teen, with poncho and jeans and a button that read: JESUS IS JUST ALL RIGHT WITH ME.
Advantages: Guaranteed instant rapport with guys in Jesus costumes. Occasional complicated flirting with guys in devil costumes ensued as well.
Limitations: Never had enough religious tracts to give away.
Unexpected benefit: A big hit in gay bars.
Costume/year: Stevie Nicks, 2000
Consisted of: Black lacy dress; lace scarves; blond curly wig; hat recycled from Yoko Ono costume; boots; CD of solo album, simulated lines of cocaine on the CD case using glue and powdered Equal sweetener.
Advantages: Much to my horror, already owned all the clothes needed to dress like Stevie Nicks.
Limitations: Often mistaken for sexy witch costume.
Unexpected benefit: Often mistaken for sexy witch costume.
Costume/year: Little Debbie, various years
Consisted of: Gingham dress; knee socks and Mary Jane shoes; straw hat; basket filled with snack cakes.
Advantages: Banana Twins are a terrific ice breaker.
Limitations: They also get squished easily.
Unexpected benefit: Massive, skull-tingling sugar rush.
Costume/year: Cathy from Flowers in the Attic, 2005
Consisted of: Ballerina outfit, with tutu appropriated from store-bought sexy-witch costume; cobwebs; blond wig with simulated tar and bucket affixed to it; basket with various props, including powdered donuts; precious ballerina music box; and two blond dolls representing growth-stunted twins.
Advantages: Imagining oneself as a tragic forsaken aspiring ballerina woman-child accused of committing filthy sins and confined to an attic is always loads of fun.
Limitations: Trying to drunkenly summarize the plot of the book to people who haven't read it.
Unexpected benefit: Actually getting to commit filthy sins in a tutu.
Posted by Wendy | Mon 10.31.05 11:44 AM | Comments (16) | TrackBack | send link
This Thursday’s Chicago reading: will be a benefit for Literacy Works and not some other organization, despite what you may have read on a couple of events listings somewhere. Literacy Works does all kinds of fantastically swell stuff like train ESL teachers and volunteer tutors to help adults learn to read, and while presumably the other organization is devoted to good things as well and not, say, into playing cruel literacy-related tricks such as hiding rubber cockroaches in books, tearing out the final pages of mystery novels, and recommending House of Leaves, they are nonetheless not the same organization as Literacy Works, on whose behalf I am reading on Thursday. So come to Hyde Park! And bring ten dollars! Or more!
(It’s hard not to be nervous about the attendance. For most readings, having a lousy turnout simply means that I’m pathetic. When it comes to this reading, a lousy turnout means that PEOPLE WILL BE DENIED THE GIFT OF KNOWLEDGE THROUGH READING, and that I’m pathetic. So do what you can.)
Last Thursday’s New Jersey reading: was fine, except for all the apocalyptic rain. From my rental car along the Garden State Parkway, New Jersey looked very, er… smeary, though I’m sure it’s way nicer when it’s dry. This state has lovely radio stations, which are great to listen to while you’re trying to find a place to turn around on the highway.
My cold: is much better, thank you. You needn’t have worried at all.
The Beeping Thingy ceased its daily beeping two days after I wrote about it and I KNEW THAT WOULD HAPPEN. I still have no idea what the hell it was.
We did, however, catch a squirrel in my office building today, after the thing came down through the ceiling this weekend and ate some of the office M&M’s. Working for a children’s book publisher means you are always surrounded by enchanted animals. And by “enchanted” I mean “awesomely freaked out on sugar.”
Bootsy the Fish: Still alive after a year and three months. Sort of. He seems to have swim bladder disorder. (Look it up.) From what I’ve read this won’t kill him, but it’s killing me to see him lying listlessly at the bottom of the tank like a junkie, flopping his semi-useless fins around like a thalidomide baby Smurf. I mean, you can’t have a fish “put down,” can you? Something dignified and fast. A tiny harpoon I can shoot into him, maybe.
Weight Watchers: Oh, you shouldn’t ask right now. I’m only mentioning it because I know you want to know, which is my own damn fault for telling you I was doing it again in the first place. You get where I’m going with this? Yeah? There you go. (And this may not be up for discussion, inasmuch as I can control that.)
But never mind that. Most everything else is good.
Posted by Wendy | Tue 10.18.05 04:03 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack | send link
I like reading Miss Snark’s agent blog, because she writes aboout slogging through manuscript submissions, and since I do that for a living too, I feel very productive reading her every morning, even when I’m actually not slogging through submissions and editing half a dozen picture books and two novels in varying stages of production at that particular moment. (Though for the most part I have been doing those things, which is why you haven’t read much here lately.) And I especially like Miss Snark when she addresses some wee itchy little tiny dustmite of a detail about writing or publishing or submissions etiquette that has always bothered me. Like business cards, and whether writers should give them to editors and agents, and vice versa. No, really, this preoccupies me way too much. Cards are swell and cards are dumb. And what the hell kind of opinion is that? Oh, I’LL TELL YOU.
So I have my cards that I use as a writer. Those are swell cards. 95% of the time I give them out to avoid having to scrawl my website urls on a napkin. I also have business cards for my job as an editor. And then I have the twenty thousand cards that people send me with their children's book manuscripts. Often they are lovingly paper-clipped to the corner of the manuscript, which makes me feel even more like a shit for throwing them away when (and yes, it's usually more "when" than "if") I pass on the manuscript. I hope people don't mind that I do this. I hope people aren't under the impression that I organize them in a tiny file cabinet labeled People Who May or May Not Someday Write a Children's Book My Company Can Publish Once I Contact Them at the Addresses and Phone Numbers Listed Herein and Discuss, At Length, the Various Strengths and Weaknesses of Their Writing. But unfortunately I will never have the time to do this, and neither does my assistant, who is very busy not existing.
I suppose it bums me out to get business cards this way because they imply a business relationship, and sadly, the relationship usually only lasts as long as it takes for me to read a three-page picture book manuscript. And then when I throw away their cards? It's like I'm throwing away their WRITERLY DREAMS. That's why I don't like cards sometimes.
When I go to writer's conferences as an editor, I do the same hemming and hawing Snark says she does when writers ask for her business card. I don't love to give mine out because they have my work email address on them. My work address and phone number isn't a guarded secret but my email is my kryptonite. If it were to get into the wrong hands it could CRIPPLE me. With CRAP. Or it would be like opening a huge twitching artery gushing "but WHY isn't it right for your company?" and "I read this aloud to my sister-in-law's Sunday School class and they loved it," and so on, all over my office. You might need to read this to understand why it's bad, but trust me, IT'S BAD. So when a writer asks me for a card, I usually give it to them and ask that they not email me, which of course makes me sound like a total pud, and that's another reason why I don't like cards sometimes.
Once I forgot to bring my cards to a writer's conference where I was speaking. It didn't seem like a big deal to me, since all the attendees had my contact information and everything they needed to know about sending a manuscript to me; it was printed on a nice tidy sheet in their folders. I figured I was off the hook; I'd simply say "I'm sorry, I forgot them," when asked. But from the looks I got from a few people you'd think I'd stomped on their new sandals.
"No?" they'd say, their faces falling.
"Sorry," I'd tell them. "But please feel free to send your story about the swimming pretzel to my attention." I'd recite the address, or I'd point it out in my company's catalog.
"Oh, but if I had your card..." they'd say, and their voices would trail off. And then I knew they wanted a trophy. I imagined a group of them gathering after the conference and comparing the cards they'd scored, stroking them to feel if the letters were embossed. I guess I can understand why some people do this. If someone wants to keep a three-and-a-half-by-two-inch token of hope tacked to their bulletin board, who am I to begrudge them?
It's just weird that my name is on it.
Posted by Wendy | Fri 10.07.05 03:17 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack | send link
and/or preventative meaures, since I’m flying out to read in New Jersey next week (Thursday the 13th here! At 7:00 pm!) and would rather not be sick, and also because I’m a big paranoid baby who hates any kind of physical discomfort:
Heating ginger ale in the microwave and drinking it with a little lemon juice and honey, and maybe—later—whiskey.
Every three hours or so, dropping one of those effervescent tablet thingies “into a small amount of plain water,” per the package instructions, and drinking that, too.
Trusting the warm ginger ale more, somehow.
Having Indian Tasty Bites for dinner (or, rather, since it’s just the one package, a single Tasty BITE, even though actually eating one requires lots of tasty biting), because they’re (it’s?) nice and spicy and thus my sinuses are happy.
Drinking tea when I’m not drinking goofy fizzy things.
Imagining that when I pee (which is often) I am flushing out the toxins, even though deep down I doubt toxins have much to do with my cold.
Going to bed early instead of writing a decent blog entry.
Posted by Wendy | Thu 10.06.05 11:43 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack | send link
I fell into some kind of internet wormhole where time appeared to elapse at a normal rate in my daily life while I worked at my job and bought a car, and watched America’s Next Top Model (my heart beats KIM KIM KIM and CORYN CORYN CORYN and maybe just a little bit for LISA, though she could stand to be medicated a little, okay, a LOT), and counted Weight Watcher points, and then didn’t count Weight Watcher points and pretended it was “core,” and drank beer, and caught up with friends, and danced. The usual. But on the internet, time lost all meaning, and it seems I was sleeping for weeks and weeks in my airtight cyberspace pod. Then again, maybe I needed the rest.
Apparently summer’s over. For months there’s been a Dove Girl in an ad on the side of a bus shelter in my neighborhood, and tonight, when I drove by, I wondered if she was cold now, in her underwear like that.
Posted by Wendy | Thu 10.06.05 11:23 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack | send link
Now that the site’s redesigned, the comments feature works a little differently than it used to. It’s set up to prevent huge onslaughts of gibbering robot comment spam, and over the past few months I’ve realized these measures allow me to moderate the incoming comments in other ways, too. My dumb little rules are as follows:
The first thing you need to know about the comments is that they aren't posted to the site right away. They're emailed to me and then I approve them if I think they're okay. And by "okay" I mean anything that's 1.) not junk, 2.) not abusive, and 3.) relevant to the discussion.
This means I'm no longer publishing any comment that reads like an email and/or mentions things that are more appropriate for a private message. I don't mind reading these kinds of posts in themselves, but sometimes the comments section of my site reads more like a guestbook, which isn't what I intended. I know some people feel it's easier and somehow less intrusive to communicate via the comments feature, but thanks to the cool little web form I have on my contact page, you can write me without having to open your email program. I like to read my fan mail but there's no reason why everyone else should have to read it, too. And if you submit a comment with a question, I'm not going to publish it unless I'm willing to follow it with an answer, which, sadly, isn't too often.
I won't publish comments that are posted to the wrong blog entry. I won't approve any attempts to respond to entries where I closed or disabled the comments feature. (Because I do that for a reason.) I will not approve any comments written in all caps. I won't approve comments written without punctuation. I'll forgive a few typos, but if your post gives the impression that you're drunker, crazier, or significantly more careless than other commenters, I'll do you a big fat favor and not publish it.
I'll publish a comment that's posted in response to another comment, and I'll probably publish the subsequent comment in response to that comment, but beyond that, all bets are off, because this isn't a bulletin board.
I might not post your comment if it's really long, or if you comment a lot and I think you might need to get out a little more. No hard feelings. I'm also not going to post your comment about how you wish I'd update my site more often, because, alas, it never has the effect you were hoping it would have on me.
Obviously I won't publish your comment if you're a douchebag, or a troll, or if you have a blatantly fake email address, or a bug up your ass about something I wrote, or if you're a robot, or an online casino enthusiast. Also, please don't hit the "post" button 10,000 times thinking that it'll make me publish your comment faster. I'm afraid it won't.
Really, if you're a reasonable person, I'll likely publish your comment. Mostly I'd love it if you didn't care too much whether I approve your comments or not. People post comments for different reasons, and not all of them fit with my idea of what my site is. Thanks for understanding.
Posted by Wendy | Mon 10.03.05 12:32 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack | send link
I haven’t even told you of my return to the ranks of the Weight Watchful Ones, have I? That I rejoined WW about a month ago? I’d been doing it online on and off for awhile, but for the past month I have been going to actual meetings in real life, the real world of flesh and blood; of membership cards; of yet more flesh weighed in on real fucking scales in front of other actual live people and everything. Oh, the humanity, and so much of it ON ME.
So it seems I’m fighting again: I’m back in The Shit. Lately I’m more willing to do everything I ought to. I eat mostly the CORE foods but follow the FLEX plan. I have heard this referred to as “Flexcore,” which sounds more like a godforsaken metal subgenre than a way of eating, but it seems to be working. I look up the points information for almost everything. I check the points listing for the Panera menu at DWLZ and Dottie breaks the bad news to me in Comic Sans. And the current new name/slogan/tagline/operating paradigm for the whole WW Program is “Turn Around,” which unfortunately causes excerpts from the song “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler to spiral through my head for at least a half hour after each meeting.
(Did you click that last link? You really should have waited for me to warn you.)
The first week I lost nothing, the second week I lost a bit, the third week I either lost nothing or gained back the bit, but I’ll never know because I skipped that week; subequently this last week I either lost nothing or lost the same bit again. I have a feeling my weight loss is going to progress at about the same pace as an Apartment 3-G storyline, but, hey, it’s something. And I’ll keep you posted.
Posted by Wendy | Wed 08.24.05 10:14 PM | Comments (34) | TrackBack | send link
So we saw that penguin movie. I know how all this sounds, after not updating for two weeks: it sounds like I completely just slacked off this whole time and then went and saw the penguin movie, me and that whoever-it-is-I’m-totally-slacking-off-with-person, who, since I’m such a slacker, hasn’t even been introduced by his official privacy-protecting online nickname (which would be “Chris”), when the reality is that I had four articles to write, and I spent much of the past couple of weeks imagining my head was like a heroin’s addict’s arm, like something I had to repeatedly smack smack smack just to get a vein of coherent thought to come up.
And then came the nod, so to speak. And then it was time to see the penguin movie.
I'd heard lots of things about the penguin movie: I know people who loved the penguin movie and people who didn't. I have a friend who emailed me to say "fuck off, Penguin Movie!" because he found it too depressing. But as it happened, we liked the penguin movie. Penguin Movie good! Penguin Movie deeply affecting!
To testify as to just how affecting: you know how some of the penguin parents accidentally let their eggs/chicks freeze/die while the other penguin parent was at sea? (And is that a plot spoiler? Is it okay that I just gave away the part where Antarctica gets really cold?) And Morgan Freeman tells us that it's going to be really sad when the other penguin comes back? But we never actually see those scenes? I was convinced that the only reason we never saw those really sad reunion scenes is because it was just too PERSONAL for the penguins and that to show such scenes would be too exploitative, too Penguin Real World. I thought the filmmakers were classy to not show that. It didn't occur to me until after the movie that it was more likely just impossible for them to tell the various penguin interactions apart--which squawks and trills conveyed things like Brr! Is cold at outer edge of huddle, yes? and which said, Um, while you were gone? I dropped the baby in the snow. Then again, it was wrenching enough to see that one penguin couple fumble their egg and watch it roll away and freeze.
Then again, I know two people (who I shall not name) who now think it's kind of funny to pass pieces of gum, remote controls, cans of beer, etc. to each other, only to accidentally-on-purpose drop them on the ground and then sadly tap the items with their toes making mournful penguin noises. And they did this today on Instant Messenger:
cms36: Here comes the egg! Get it! Hurry!
wendym: Fuck! It rolled too far!
cms36: Eerrrrhhhh? ...Errrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeerhhhhhh!
wendym: Hrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrh! (Click click!)
This, despite the fact that they really did like the penguin movie very much.
Posted by Wendy | Wed 08.17.05 10:01 PM | Comments (22) | TrackBack | send link
There are two new entities in my life that have kept me from updating more lately. Both play songs on demand and both devote much of their existence to collecting huge encylopedic shitloads of recorded music. One is an iPod and one is a person. The iPod is a mini but the person is full size, and unlike an iPod, the person can probably be soaked in water, which I believe gives him somewhat of an advantage. That is all I will say for now. Please add these to the fifty-seven other reasons I have for not updating more.
Reason Fifty-Eight is that we went to the Body Worlds exhibit today and saw all kinds of freaky plastinated bodies all flayed out like meaty Transformers, as well as assorted parts and accessories. I never much wondered what male genitalia looked like without skin, but jeez, did I ever find out. (That link is totally safe for work, by the way, as are links to other things that came to mind). When I looked at even the most impressive bodies, the ones where the organs are arranaged in cunning Swiss Army formations, inevitably some thought like hey Nougat Nuts, put some pants on would cross my mind. I couldn't help it. Maybe it's because I used to go to the Museum of Science and Industry when I was a kid, so I associate the place with the train set and the Mold-A-Rama machine and other juvenile things.
We did not steal a fetus. But then, one of us couldn't pass the cardiovascular display without shaking a fist and saying "Why, aorta...," and really, that might be a crime as well. On our way out of the exhibit we tried to go over to sign the guestbooks, but it was crowded, and half a dozen boys were pressed against the counter where the guestbooks were. We got just close enough to see one of the pages, which said, in big loopy print letters:
I saw a lot of balls today. And nipples.
How life-affirming is that, I ask you?
In other news, Leigh Anne and I were interviewed for Red Eye this past week, and it might run as the cover story on Tuesday, though I have no idea who or what will be on the cover. Nobody took my photo, so we can only hope that the cover will be Leigh Anne holding up a Hitachi you-know-what. We'll have to wait and see.
Posted by Wendy | Sun 06.05.05 11:27 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | send link
I’m back in Chicago now. I’ve been home since Wednesday night, but it took going through the stacks of mail and all the other crap that accumulated over the past few weeks to feel like I was really home home, and not just shuffling through a familiar landscape of laundry piles and receipts and business cards (am I the only person who doesn’t know what to do with other people’s cards? Where do I put them? Should I put them in a bowl and have a monthly drawing and send the winner a nice gift certificate to Sizzler? I deliberated this as I went throughthe cards and about five hundred thousand other pieces of paper today.). But now everything is in its place and so am I.
I stayed in four different hotels on this last trip. I have a recurring bad dream about missing the check-out time. I collected all the complimentary shower caps from the bathrooms. I don’t know why. I have this idea I can use them like these things, which I would never buy. That’s how homesickness makes you weird, I guess: I began to imagine this domestic existence covering big bowls of homemade salads, even though I’ve spent the past three months or subsisting on handfuls of dry cereal and frozen burritos from Trader Joes. But it looks like I’ll be home long enough this time that it might be possible to have a legitimately kitchenlike experience in my own kitchen. Theoretically, at least.
I updated the book site. Go there! Be informed! Wisconsin is next.
Posted by Wendy | Tue 05.31.05 12:47 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | send link
I hate the key situation. I hate not having keys. It’s not until I travel that I realize how compulsively necessary it is for me to be able to reach for and clutch and stash and dig out my big jangly set of keys. I especially hate that one of the first things I have to do when I leave to go on a trip is bury my keys deep in my bag and pretend they don’t exist for however many days I’m gone. I hate reaching in to find them when I’m almost home and worrying that they’ve suddenly ceased to exist. I hate that when I travel my reassuring handful of keychain is traded for a plastic hotel key card. A card! How the fuck am I supposed to trust a card? It’s barely three dimensional. I put it in my purse and I can practically feel the universe threaten to suck it through any one of its slot-shaped wormholes back into total oblivion.
I do not like that most hotels seem to have Pepsi and not Coke machine. Diet Pepsi in a plastic bottle for $1.50 or more is three kinds of wrong, and it tastes like chemicals and exile.
I wish there was only one kind of alarm clock. Or only one kind for all the hotels in the world. The one this morning had TWO alarm settings and to the best of my ability to decipher the configurations of buttons and light-up dots I thought I'd set them both, but only one went off. I had a wake-up call and I got up anyway, but still, doubt lingers like a silent fart.
Also, how does the "sleep" button work and who are these people who use it?
Also, why is the default alarm setting always on radio mode, and why is it always tuned in at the most ragged edge of an AM frequency, at full volume, spraying big blurts of static and unintelligible newstalk? I keep waking up to what sounds like air traffic controllers attacked by bees.
I like those little folding stands that you use to hold up your luggage. I never used to understand the point of using them, but now in every hotel room I find the stand and open it and haul my suitcase up on it and I feel like a very savvy traveler for some reason.
I think I am seriously dyslexic or otherwise cognitively impaired when it comes to reading those signs in hotel hallways, i.e., "Rooms 301-319-->" The numbers! The arrows! The greater than/less than propostions! Two out of three times I always start out walking in the wrong direction.
I like that I am writing this entry from the Limoliner going from Boston to New York. I checked, and I'm pretty sure that I'm only the 416th person to write a damn blog entry from the Limoliner. Really, it's the pimpingist bus ever. It doesn't have that toilet chemical smell that Amtrak trains totally have, either.
I have new pictures up on the Flickr page. Most of them are of Boston, with a couple of cameraphone pics of the day I spent in Nashua. Note to New Hampshire residents: I'm sorry that the only photos of your state are of a hotel and a gift shop, but I'm afraid that's all I got to see in the very short time I was there. Only a few precious moments there, really.
We just passed a sign for Squantz Pond State Park. Where is that? Are we almost there?
Posted by Wendy | Sun 05.22.05 10:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | send link
…on the plane to Seattle; in a hotel room in Seattle for four nights; in the same hotel room in Seattle for two totally konked-out hours during the day after an early morning TV thing; in a town car driving from Seattle to Portland; in a hotel room in Portland for about four hours; in the guest bedroom at my friends’ house in Portland for two more totally konked-out hours; in the guest bedroom for three more nights; in a chair at the salon where we were getting pedicures; on the plane from Portland to Denver; on the plane from Denver to Chicago.
Thank you: Laurel and Mark, who put me up in Portland; Pam and Suzanne, who drove me to the Bellevue reading (I will email you!); Linda and Chiara, who hung out with us afterwards; Tiffany Midge, who took the photos at Third Place; Dawn and Jennifer, who took me out for drinks later; Charmaine, who painted my toes I’m Not Really A Waitress Red; Crofton, who helped me not freak out in the green room; Ron, who gave me a ride to the damn airport; everyone who showed up at all three readings; everyone who bought a book or asked a question or just nodded helpfully; all the bookstore folks (Don! Wendy! People at Powell’s!); Brian in Tulsa, for doing such a fun interview; the tattooed chick who cut my hair on short notice on a Sunday; anyone else I’ve neglected to mention.
If you’re in Seattle, you can get signed copies at the downtown Borders, Third Place Books, the University Bookstore Bellevue store, and Elliott Bay Books in Pioneer Square. Portland folks can find signed copies at the Lloyd Center Borders, the downtown Borders (including the “Borders Express,” where I guess all the books can be read more quickly than at the normal Borders); a Borders somewhere around Beaverton (it was a big strip mall); Powell’s.
That sound you just heard was my head hitting the desk. I slept there, too.
Posted by Wendy | Sun 05.08.05 11:50 PM | TrackBack | send link
If my brain could breathe it would be making Darth Vader noises right now. Fwoooh, fwhihhh, fwoooh, fwhihhh. Like that. Fwoooh, fwhihhh, the you-know-what is out; fwoooh, fwhihhh, fwoooh, live TV Tuesday morning; fwoooh, fwhihhh,the reading Wednesday night; fwoooh, fwhihhh, the other reading Wednesday night. Fwoooh, radio Wednesday. Fwihh, radio Thursday. Fwoooh, fwhihhh, fwoooh, Seattle Friday.
Yes: give me a paper bag. For my head to breathe in. And also, just so I can be really, stupidly, annoyingly shy just for a minute, okay? And then I’ll be fine. Fwoooh, thanks. Fwhihhh.
Posted by Wendy | Mon 04.25.05 08:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | send link
I don’t usually talk about my job, but someone else has written about reading manuscripts for a children’s book publisher so I don’t have to. And she’s just scratched the surface as far as the kind of stuff we get. Though am I crazy for wanting to read that POPGIRL story? Getting that query in the mail would make my day, I think.
If you’re wondering while I haven’t had a thing to say here about Kirstie Alley and Fat Actress it’s because I wrote about it for an upcoming BUST column. So while you’ll have to wait until late May to see it, please know that I did get paid to watch her flail around and scream hoarsely out her car window at the drive-thru about how she didn’t get her order of fries, which, if you know anything about the mysterious and reportedly hilarious ways of fat people, is NOT something an actual fat person would ever do, since they do everything they can to avoid public displays of blatant fattery. But Kirstie Alley has some weird ideas about fat, because judging from the way she dresses herself now, she thinks being fat comes with a special talent for reading Tarot cards.
I wish I could think of something to say about Celebrity Fit Club on VH1, which was not nearly as wrongheaded as Fat Actress (though—again, what was with all the weird medieval details? The set design? Maybe Hollywood stylists never see fat people outside of Renaissance Fairs and think that we all dress like serving wenches and/or sit in ornate carved chairs?). So, nothing else to add for now, except that in my boot camp class I do push-ups just like Wendy The Snapple Lady and when she did a set of standard pushups that one time I felt sort of personally betrayed somehow.
Posted by Wendy | Thu 03.17.05 04:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | send link
This article about all the weird things that can happen during book tours and signing events has me alternately excited and anxious about the events of the next few months (and there are about a dozen of them now, holy crap), because besides the usual reasons for being excited and nervous, I think I already have a weird and poignant book-signing anecdote, so God knows what else is going to happen.
The story is this: back in the fall, my friend Dana and I were attending our friend Erin’s wedding, and we were staying at a hotel with another friend of ours. The wedding itself was over by two PM. The reception didn’t start until after six. It was nearly four and we’d already taken a long nap. “Well, I guess we can start drinking now,” one of us said. Okay, so maybe it was me.
Dana went down the hall to get some ice. When she didn’t return after awhile, I peeked outside and found her in the hallway talking to the woman next door. The hotel was part of a casino and there seemed to be a certain anything-goes spirit to the whole place which made it easy to strike up conversations with total strangers.
“They’re making green apple martinis,” Dana said when she’d come back inside. “They said to come on over!” There were three of them: a woman in her thirties with her teenage daughter and her mother, who looked far younger than her years—in my head I called her Grandma Foxy. They were all dark-skinned and gorgeous. The younger two looked more polished in high heels and jeans than we did in our wedding-guest outfits, and the foxy grandmother had a bias-cut dress and a totally amazing weave. They made us drinks and we brought over candy.
The woman our age was single again and her daughter made fun of her for only wanting to date white men. Grandma Foxy mentioned matter-of-factly that she had incurable brain cancer. “Nothing I can do,” she said, “but just enjoy myself.” I loved her after about five minutes of conversation. We all loved each other after about five minutes of conversation. The women lived nearby but they had come here for a “girl’s weekend,” they said. They were going to dinner at a fancy steak house later on, they said, and maybe we could meet them after the wedding reception.
Dana and Ericka and I looked at each other. Hell yeah! we were thinking. We wanted to meet them later; we wanted to be their best friends; we wanted to buy them bottles of champagne and designer handbags. We wanted to change our whole lives. But what time did we have to leave for the reception? When did we have to check out? We let our neighbors add more vodka to our plastic cups.
“Wendy has a book coming out,” my friend Ericka told them. “A book!” exclaimed Grandma Foxy. I explained that I had just turned in the manuscript and it would be out in the spring. I tried to tell them what it was about but I was having a really hard time. I wished I had a copy and could just give it to them. “Will we be able to buy your book?” they asked. Yes, I told them, in a bookstore and everything.
“Well,” said Grandma Foxy, “you are just gonna have to sign our book for us.” Sure, I told her. “So
will you sign it?” she asked. Well, yeah, I said. Maybe she didn’t understand that it wasn’t out yet. “Okay!” she said, and she walked across the room to the dresser and got something out of her bag. “She’s going to sign the book for us,” she told her daughter.
She handed me a big, thick hardcover book. It was My Life by Bill Clinton. It looked almost new.
“I haven’t finished it yet, but it’s very good,” she said. And then she fished a pen out of her purse and gave it to me.
“Oh, gosh, I can’t sign this,” I said. I was a little drunk. And this was the memoir of our former president. “Are you sure?” I asked.
Oh yes, they said. They insisted.
I opened it up to the title page. The paper felt expensive and I could feel the binding yield just a little. I heard myself say, “Now how do you spell your name?” as if I’d always known to ask that.
I wrote “Dear” and wrote her name, which unfortunately I’ve forgotten by now. “It has been an honor to spend this time with you and your beautiful family. Best wishes to you all.” I wanted to write more, but it wasn’t my book. It was written by someone else; it belonged to this woman I knew I’d never see again, because of course Dana and I would stay at the reception until it ended, and when we got back to the hotel it would be too late to do anything except kick off our shoes and change for bed and sleep off all the wine. All the same, I signed the book with my name and it almost felt right. Or at least not all that wrong.
Posted by Wendy | Tue 03.08.05 02:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | send link
I pay more attention to Christmas lyrics than any normal person ought to. I think this is because one afternoon, when I was six years old, my grandpa read A Visit from St. Nicholas (aka “Twas The Night Before Christmas”) aloud to me, and though I’d probably heard the poem dozens of times by then, I hadn’t realized that the narrator—maybe Clement C. Moore himself—vomits right in the middle of the story. It happens not too long after that part with the sugar plums dancing in the heads and so on, right after out on the lawn there arose such a clatter.
” ‘I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter!’ ” my grandfather read. I loved his voice. ” ‘Away to the window I flew like a flash,’ ” he continued. ” ‘Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.’ “
He stopped for a second. “Uh-oh,” he said. “He threw up.”
“Really?” I said. I could definitely understand why someone might throw up on Christmas Eve. Sometimes I worried that I would.
“Poor fella,” my grandpa said. It was good to know that a little puke didn’t necessarily ruin a Christmas, but all the same, I don’t think I ever asked anyone to read me the story again.
Anyway, that might explain why I am the way I am now. Here is a list of holiday song lyrics that bother me:
Lyric: “It doesn’t show signs of stopping,/ And I brought some corn for popping.” Reason: It’s POPCORN. Who calls it “corn for popping,” the Pennsylvania Dutch? And who brings pantry items on a date? What else does she have in her purse—Cocoa for Heating? Cake of Fruiting? The protagonist of this song is a crazy food-hoarder with convoluted syntax, and I hate having to think of Ella Fitzgerald that way when she sings this.
Lyric: “And so I’m offering this simple phrase/ To kids from one to ninety-two.” Reason: Excuse me, Nat King Cole, but I think “Merry Christmas to You” has long been in the public domain, so to offer it, especially with some arbitrary bullshit age limit, seems awfully cheap. Actually, I hate this song in general, since it’s called “The Christmas Song” in a very knowing, meta way, and has no story or point other than to be a purely fetishistic inventory of Christmas imagery, with that crass “offer” of commodified goodwill in the last verse. This song is all about Jack Frost nipping at your SOUL, for God’s sake. Pass the crack pipe, Natalie.
Lyric: “You will get a sentimental/ feeling when you hear /Voices singing let’s be jolly,/deck the halls with boughs of holly.” Reason: “You will get a sentimental feeling” sounds unsettlingly like a hypnotic suggestion. Also, “let’s be jolly” is not anywhere in “Deck the Halls,” duh, so the only time you’ll ever hear voices sing, specifically, “let’s be jolly, deck the halls with boughs of holly,” is in this song, which means this song is referring to ITSELF and the sentimental feeling you’ll supposedly get next time you hear it, and the next time after that, and on and on into infinity this song will tell you how to feel.
Lyric: “Here comes Santa Claus! Here comes Santa Claus! Riding down Santa Claus Lane!” Reason: Gene Autry had to have pulled these lines out of his butt. Sorry, but he did.
Lyric: “In the meadow we can build a snowman, /And pretend that he’s a circus clown. We’ll have lots of fun with Mister Snowman,/ Until the other kiddies knock him down.” Reason: Okay—building a snowman in order to pretend it’s a circus clown is just fucking demented. It’s like building a robot and pretending it’s Dracula. Or putting a sock on your hand and pretending it’s the Incredible Hulk. It makes no imaginative sense whatsoever. Anyway, the people in this song already built a clergyman snowman and pretended to discuss their marriage plans with it, which is admittedly bizarre, but you can at least sort of see the point, and then presumably these are consenting adults here, since they are talking about love and marriage and facing their future and they use the word “conspire” in the fourth verse and everything—so why do they suddenly regress in the very next verse and build a retarded snow-clown and blather about “the other kiddies?” Wonderland or not, we need continuity here, guys. On the other hand, I did come across a really interesting alternate version of this verse that involves ALLIGATORS—no really, read it: they talk about having fun with Mister Snowman until the alligators knock him down—and, well, that changes everything and makes the whole premise completely surreal in a way that I fully support.
Posted by Wendy | Mon 12.20.04 01:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | send link
Ten Ways In Which Writing This Damn Book Was Just Like Having a Baby:
It took months and months to produce.
People kept asking me when it was due.
It gave me a taste for foods I’d never really cared about before, like clementines and buffalo wings.
It made me gain a distressing amount of weight.
It filled me with a feeling of flutteringly happy anticipation which only occasionally mingled with a sense of sheer, keening terror.
It made me inexplicably cry at things on the radio.
It made me miss work, and more of it than I'd planned on missing.
It screwed up my sleep patterns.
And my social life.
And all sense of normal existence.
Ten Ways In Which Writing This Damn Book Was Nothing At All Like Having a Baby:
Did not have to push book out of body.
Did not need to have book surgically removed from body.
Did not, and it bears repeating, have a physical entity of any kind pass through any sort of portal in my body, by which I mean neither a pre-existing opening nor one specially created for the occasion.
Book makes noise only when dropped, and then still works okay afterwards.
Book not even in the remotest danger of being abducted by a religious cult or carried off by dingoes.
Book did not wind up five pages shorter for every cigarette I smoked.
Book will not, in a few short years' time, develop the ability to dance ballet just the way I'm sure I would have had I only been given the proper encouragment and a pretty pretty tutu, alas.
Book does not have that sweet baby smell.
Book, on the other hand, will not vomit on me, or anything else.
Book will not pee itself, anywhere, ever, and especially not spectactularly into the air.
Posted by Wendy | Wed 09.08.04 01:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | send link
